Have you ever dreamed about writing a best selling book? Well, Amazon’s self-publication platform Kindle Direct lets you do just that. With the right market research you can write your category killing book and sell it to the masses without dealing with the cost and bureaucratic hassles of traditional publishing. The best part is, once you’ve published the book, it will continue to bring in revenue month after month with little effort on your part! People are earning anywhere from a few hundred dollars to well over $100,000 publishing on Amazon.
We all know you can buy and sell stuff on Craigslist, but have you ever thought about offering a service you can provide. If providing a service isn’t your thing, you can scan Craigslist for great deals and then later resell items for a profit. This takes persistence and patience, but I have a friend who went from a $4k truck to a $24k in truck in 18 months by flipping cars from Craigslist.
Job description: "As a member of our front-end engineering team, you'll have the opportunity to enhance our users' experience by proposing and implementing improvements and new features in a variety of apps. We are looking for highly communicative, auto managed, hard-working guys with great tech skills. You are expected to learn from and contribute to team knowledge. As part of a successful growing startup, you will be involved in the whole product development flow, and your voice will be heard!"
Anyone who is artistically inclined and enjoys animals may like running a pet portraits business. For those who like to draw, paint, or work with another medium, doing commissioned portraits is a great way to earn an income creating art. Loving animals helps business owners stay interested in their work even when they’re working on animal portraits several days in a row.

Can you draw, paint, or create another form of art that others would be willing to purchase? Create a Facebook or Etsy store to create works of art commissioned in your preferred medium. I know someone who draws Valentine’s cards, Christmas cards, and even birthday invitations for extra money for her family. With that money, she helped fund an international adoption. Another friend draws beautiful portraits of babies and children from pictures that are sent to her.

It’s funny that you put baking of all things on this list. I’d often considered the idea of baking cookies and things and selling them on Facebook garage sale sites and things like that – until I made Christmas cookies last week and found out how difficult it is. Let’s just say it gave me a healthy appreciate for the people who make all the tasty desserts I regularly enjoy!

Unfortunately, while there is still a ton of WordPress website projects – it’s now more of a commodity service. The best WordPress developers now on UpWork are based in India or the UK. WordPress development becoming a commodity is fine if you want to build a $500 website for your friend’s local business, but it’s a lot tougher to scale. I no longer work on WordPress projects unless I am helping a friend for free, because I don’t enjoy building sites as much as I like doing SEO consulting.
Those who have experience in HR and a thorough understanding of Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) will do well. You will need a certain amount of people skills to attract clients, but the results will matter far more than how friendly and personable you are. If 90% of your clients find a job in their field after paying you a visit, these numbers will speak for themselves.
If you want to find a profitable online course idea in the next 3 days, join my free online course Find a Profitable Business Idea today. It'll walk you step-by-step through the process I've used to generate more than $15,000 in online course sales in a single week. Then once you're ready to start teaching your own online course, I recommend using Teachable, the easiest and most affordable platform to use for creating, hosting and selling your online courses. They also have a ton of free educational resources about how to get started with creating an online course (yes, even as a side business idea) when you sign up right here.

But before you can graduate from side business idea and start earning a full-time living as a graphic designer, you'll need to build your skills—I recommend starting with reading the foundational book Graphic Design School and Steal Like an Artist, the incredible book by Austin Kleon about how to become more creative. To accelerate your education in becoming a graphic designer even quicker, check out the online courses Graphic Design Fundamentals and The Graphic Design Bootcamp. Then once you're an expert at your craft, you can further your education and move up to offering more hands-on experiences like design sprints for higher-value clients around the world.

Obviously, this business is ideal for veteran, practicing artists. It is also educational in nature, so it is good for those who have formal or informal experience with being a teacher or teacher's assistant. Finally, it's a job that is best for a “people person,” as your entire business model revolves around prolonged contact with strangers, so being able to engage and connect with them immediately is crucial.
For individuals who enjoy sewing or seamstress work, have some artistic talent, or have an eye for patterning and organizing ideas into a tangible object, quilting can be the perfect career. A background in sewing is preferable, although some quilters started because of a love or passion for creating and quickly found their niche in the quilting community.
It’s a big risk to leave a stable job and venture out into territory unknown, which is exactly why many people decide to test the demand for their new business while still enjoying the benefits of a full-time salary. This works particularly well if the idea is new or you aren’t sure whether or not the product will go over well in your area. By not committing full-time to the business, you can maintain a safety net in case it doesn’t go as well as you hope.
Obviously, this business is ideal for veteran, practicing artists. It is also educational in nature, so it is good for those who have formal or informal experience with being a teacher or teacher's assistant. Finally, it's a job that is best for a “people person,” as your entire business model revolves around prolonged contact with strangers, so being able to engage and connect with them immediately is crucial.
In the book, Chris draws upon his deep well of experience starting different side hustles, then blends that knowledge with the experiences and case-studies of people from many walks of life to distill a step-by-step methodology based on what actually works in the real world. He offers a roadmap that takes you from idea to tested and implemented side hustle in a remarkably short period of time.
Websites aren't too dissimilar to stocks. Many are junk, but some can generate value for you, making it a strong potential business idea if you have an eye for spotting the diamond in the rough That’s why, like stocks, they are bought and sold all the time. You can buy and sell websites as a side business idea in the hope of generating future earnings based on their user traffic, current revenue intake, domain name, or some other factors that might be a hidden cash cow everyone else has overlooked. Interested? Check out marketplaces like Flippa and Flipping Enterprises to learn more.
This job is primarily successful for those who already use eBay extensively. At the end of the day, eBay is like any other market, and success requires being competitive in a market filled with other sellers. As such, being familiar with how other sellers price and describe similar products to your own merchandise will help you hit the ground running when you begin selling. The business is also ideal for those who enjoy a flexible schedule and are motivated self-starters.
Not to be confused with hoarding, this business idea takes a lot of time, patience, and passion. If you have an eye for good art, it’s easy to get in on the ground level by visiting the studio department at your local university—though don't expect to get rich overnight with this side business idea. Many art students are more than happy to sell their work for a bargain, and in as little as a few years, there's a chance that piece you bought for a couple hundred bucks may be worth well into the thousands. Beware though, this business idea will take a whole lot of patience (and storage space for all that art).
People love their pets, and many pet owners want to memorialize their non-human friends through artwork. Pet portraits businesses create custom portraits of pets for customers. Many businesses are run by a single artist, but businesses can also have several artists on staff. The mediums these artists create offer a different feel than photographs -- which pet owners can take themselves -- provide.

A relationship coach offers helpful, actionable tips about how to strengthen relationships with romantic partners. A relationship coach may work with husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, or single people. It's unequivocally different from couple's therapy in that it focuses more on the behavior patterns of the relationship and not as much the thought patterns. It doesn't require couples to delve into their past, or to open up about their innermost desires and fears. It is not designed to address serious underlying issues like mental illness or domestic violence. It’s a method of helping couples or individuals find the motivation they need to tweak their habits, so they can survive and thrive. It helps single people identify what they need in a relationship, and separate those needs from what they want. Coaches help communities by resolving conflict, promoting domestic harmony, and establishing healthier coping skills.

Great post, MM! Incredibly inspiring, I really only grasped the side hustle concept since starting my blog about 6 months ago, after reading sites like yours. Already, apart from my blog, I’ve put my personal recording studio into use and started a music production side hustle, and a friend and I have launched a boutique logo design start up, called BroGoLogo, as an quality alternative to commodity products/services that you mention in this post.

Do you live in a destination where others frequently visit? If you know your city well and enjoy meeting new people, get the best of both worlds by starting your own local tour business. Make it unique like Erik Hormann’s Vantigo, a company that takes you around San Francisco in a stylish VW van, and you’ll be able to command anywhere from $55 to $600 depending on the tour.

An acting classes business provides group or one-on-one classes in acting for adults or children. As the owner of an acting classes business, you’ll provide training, coaching and support to those who are considering getting into the acting business or those already in the business who would like to improve their chances of landing a role. Most business owners in this field will want to find a niche. For instance, you might work with children, or with a career-oriented adult audience interested in stage acting, film, commercials, voice-over work or other areas of specialization.

But regular side hustles are especially popular among American millennials — 38 percent of people ages 18 and 37 told Bankrate that they make money from their side hustles at least once a month. That's compared to 30 percent of Gen Xers (ages 38 to 53) and 24 percent of Baby Boomers (ages 54 to 72). Bankrate also found that 15 percent of millennials earn money from their side hustle a weekly basis, 10 percent "a few times" each month and 13 percent once a month.

A dried flower business will sell dried flowers to hobbyists or craft stores. A flower preservation business will save important flowers, like wedding bouquets, for interested parties. Owners may do one or both of these services, but they are separate. Dried flowers do have a demand amongst a variety of people who use them to finish their craft projects. Flower preservation is perfect for those who want to scrapbook their memories, or fill boxes and chests with important mementos. Demand has increased for dried flowers over the past few years, as more people discover easy and fun DIY challenges.

Crafts are a great way for parents to entertain their children and encourage them to be creative, but it’s not always easy to come up with new projects in the moment. Selling templates of images that children can trace or attempt to draw on their own can be a fun side business and a popular product. You can put together themed template-books, along with guides that teach children how to make various types of crafts.

I surprisingly get a lot of people asking to detail their car. I never intend to make a business of it, but I love doing it to my cars and people ask me to do it to theirs. All it takes is a cheap orbital buffer (mines a used craftsman) and a shop vac. I normally get easily $100 for a basic wash/wax/vac, or $200 to remove scratches and polish then wax the car.